He thought about Trey Pomeroy saying Daddy through a screen door.
"Fourteen."
"Go ahead."
"Fourteen, the school confirms a student by that name in that class. Parent on file is Brooke Garvey, mother. No other guardians listed." A pause. Rodney could hear, under the dispatcher's voice, the clack of a keyboard. "Be advised, the school secretary states there's a note on the student's file that says do not release any information regarding the student or family, refer all inquiries to the building principal. Principal is at a district meeting at central office until four. Secretary states she does not personally know the mother by sight; mother does walker pickup at the gate and the secretary has only spoken with her by phone."
Rodney closed his eyes for half a second, which was as long as he ever closed them on duty.
He knew what a note like that meant, or he knew what it usually meant. It meant that somebody in the family was not supposed to get near the child. It meant there was an order somewhere, or a threat, or both. In his experience it was the father more often than not, but not always, not nearly always, and the note didn't say which, and the person who could tell him which was in a conference room on the other side of town eating a cookie from a plastic tray. And the name on the file was the name on the temporary license, and the temporary license was nine days old, and he had a punched license in his hand with another name on it, and the woman had begged him, with real fear in her voice, not to type that other name into a computer.
What if she was the one the note was about? What if the mother on file was the real Brooke Garvey, and the woman in front of him was someone who knew her name, knew her daughter's name, knew which window to look at? It was a ridiculous thought, the kind of thought you have at two in the morning, but he had stopped, on a porch in 2008, being able to tell ridiculous thoughts from the other kind before the fact.
And what if she wasn't? What if every word was true?
Then she was a woman who had come a long way to stand by a fence, and he was standing between her and the only thing she wanted to look at.
"Copy," he said into the radio. "Thanks."